Today, there is great interest in the personalization and customization of images as a way to add value to documents. This is especially true in transactional and promotional marketing applications, but is gaining traction in more image intensive markets such as photo finishing, whereby personalized calendars, photobooks, greeting cards, and the likes are created. Several technologies currently exist to personalize images such as XMPie, DirectSmile, and AlphaPictures, for example. In such applications, a photorealistic result is intended, since the targeted products include calendars or other “long term” print pieces. At the same time, these approaches are cumbersome and complicated, requiring stock photos, sophisticated design tools, and designer input with image processing experience.
Image personalization is a popular concept, and finds application in promotion, transpromo, calendars, marketing, etc. One form of image personalization incorporates variable text into a fixed image in a natural way. U.S. Publication No. 2010/0156919 describes methods and a system for incorporating personalized text into an image that includes the elements of identifying a region for text insertion or replacement; estimating the 3D surface geometry within that region; and rendering the text onto the surface. The approach relates to planar surfaces, and relies upon the computation of vanishing points of convergent lines in the image that are parallel in the 3D scene. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/011,959 builds on this approach and relates methods to automatically estimate the location and orientation of the convergent lines from image features. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/964,820 describes a process for text personalization on curved (specifically cylindrical) surfaces. In these approaches, the user makes an initial judgment as to whether or not an image is suitable for personalization, and if so, where to insert or replace text within the image.
What are therefore needed are convenient and automated systems and methods to automatically assess how suitable an image is for personalization, and identify suitable regions in an image for insertion of personalized text into the image.